Tuesday, 26 January 2021

My groomer found a flea on my dog and I'm freaking out

Hi everyone,

I hope that I can get some advice from you all on what to do, and if this is all in my head or not. When I took my dog to get groomed about 5 days ago (last Friday; he's a poodle mix whose fur grows pretty long, so we cut it down quite short twice a year), our groomer told me that she noticed a flea underneath his fur on his shoulders. We gave him a bath about a week before the appointment and I didn't notice any fleas (although I don't have a trained eye for them). She said that she gave him a flea bath and that I should wash his bedding and vacuum when I get home. I ran by the pet store on the way home and bought a spray for upholstery/mattresses, etc. Once we arrived home, I did the following:

  1. I vacuumed the entire apartment thoroughly and threw out the vacuum bag.
  2. I stripped the mattress of pillows, and gathered all the blankets that came into contact with our dog in the last week. I washed/dried them all on the hottest settings.
  3. I sprayed down the dog bed, the furniture in our living room, and our mattress with the spray I bought (turns out it was a natural spray? Maybe I should get something stronger?).
  4. I triple-bagged all of his toys. I'm not sure what to do with them.

The next day (Saturday) I noticed another flea on my dog (after he interacted with our neighbor's dog), and so I gave him the Vectra-3D flea treatment on his fur. I could not find another flea on him after that. I also sprayed down the couch he was sitting on and his dog bed (again).

For the past several days, I feel like I've been growing increasingly paranoid about these fleas and have no idea if I'm being totally overkill or not. I have been investigating literally every black speck on the ground for any red residue, every time my dog itches or looks distracted, I look over his fur to search for fleas (again, haven't found a third flea). Today I found a black speck in his fur that crumbled between my fingers and looked like red residue! I went over everything with another spot treatment, vacuumed the apartment again (throwing away the vacuum residue).

I've been having nightmares about fleas. I feel itchy, but haven't found any on me or my clothes at all, so it could be psychosomatic. I also haven't noticed any bites as of yet, but I'm stressed constantly; I just changed my clothes for the fourth time today because I'm scared that there might be fleas on them (still haven't found any on my clothes, yet). I am planning to buy a fogger pack tomorrow, but is this an overreaction? Everything I see online is talking about dealing with tens or hundreds of fleas, but I have only seen one myself so far. Am I just totally freaking out for no reason, or am I on the precipice of one of these nightmare waves of fleas that people talk about on this site? If anyone has any insight into how to deal with this problem, it would be much appreciated!

submitted by /u/alreadytakenoh
[link] [comments]

from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/l5yqc7/my_groomer_found_a_flea_on_my_dog_and_im_freaking/

No comments:

Post a Comment